Big Damn Heroes
by amithelie
Summary: Rescue the damsel in distress. Kill the bad guy. Save the world. Funny how things are never quite that simple. Rule 63.[Deanna/Harry]
1. Chapter 1

Hunting was a dangerous, thankless job. Deanna had accepted that. Hunting was a dangerous, thankless job whose only payment was a short brutal life and dying alone on the claws of some freak. Fine, Deanna accepted that too. What Deanna did not accept was that she had to die bare-ass naked in a shitty motel in some shitty corner of New Orleans with the cold, dirt encrusted hands of a revenant fresh from its coffin wrapped around her throat.

So she bucked and thrashed, clawed at the creature's wrists and kicked the guy lying next to her in the side as hard as she could to rouse him, clawing ineffectually at the silent deadly fingers sending black spots blooming across her field of vision.

"Bloody hell," groaned the guy.

A beat, and then. "Oh, bloody _hell_!"

There was a knife underneath her pillow, a gun in the side table. Both basically useless on a revenant and functionally useless to her cause if she gave the inch she needed to grab one she'd pass out and it'd all be over.

There was a clatter and a crash as a lamp when banging to the floor and then, actually, blessedly shockingly enough, boy toy cracked the big dead mother across the side of the face with the ancient dried-puke beige rotary phone from the side table.

Hard enough that the freak actually _let go_ and holy fuck yes, she could _breathe_.

The rush of air and adrenaline gave her a burst of strength and she kicked the two hundred pounds of solidly built but rotting black man off the bed and onto the floor. She recognized his features from the police report before the guy from last night started pounding his face into cat food. He'd looked like his crazy bitch sister. Go figure.

Deanna coughed and swallowed and rolled off the bed to catch the guy's arm mid swing, "Alright dude, he gets the point."

The corpse twitched. Vengeance and death magic was better than gasoline for keeping the engine hot, but it wasn't going anywhere quickly until it sorted out what it could manage with bits of skull sticking into its brain.

The phone clattered to the floor and the guy leaned back on his haunches breathing heavily and smearing gore on his face when he made an aborted attempt to drag a hand through his hair.

"Alright?" he panted.

"Peachy," Deanna said, arching a brow. "Someone will have heard that, we're gonna need to get gone."

The guy swayed to his feet, "Can't leave this bloke here," he pointed out.

The corpse twitched again. Deanna pulled a face, thinking. The guy was right, leaving tall, dark and hella dead here was a recipe for disaster and dismemberment and other unpleasant d words. She wracked her brains for a second. There was lighter fluid in her bag. It wasn't subtle but they were getting gone anyway so—

"Help me get him in the bathtub."

The two of them managed to get big ugly into the motel's yellowing mildew encrusted tub and Deanna poured the whole bottle of lighter fluid out, just to be thorough and flicked on the fan and opened the window the barest crack that she could manage.

Still, it was telephone boy who remembered to take the shower curtain down so that they didn't accidentally torch the motel. Some enterprising chain-smoker had already dealt with those pesky alarm things.

All of that took about three minutes, another five to get nominally dressed, wash the scuz from their hands and faces and flick a book of matches into the bathtub and then they were sliding back into the Impala and rocketing down the bare black top of the local interstate.

Easy peasy. Just another night in the life of Deanna Winchester.

Only it wasn't just another night in the life, because Deanna Winchester worked alone, and the pretty boy she'd picked up out of the bar line up was no hunter. Not dressed in a suit that probably cost more than her car with an artfully messy head of overlong dark curls. No chance.

Probably.

She cracked her neck and winced as the motion aggravated the abused tissues of her throat. Unfortunately the only cure for an aborted throttling was ibuprofen with an ice cream chaser and a few days in turtlenecks. Yippee.

Her baby purred under her as she flouted all the posted speed limits and then rumbled into the same truck stop she'd eyed longingly rolling into town a week ago.

It was her kind of place, independently owned and attached to a greasy spoon diner with the obligatory red pleather booths and blue-grey formica tabletops. The waitress was a girl with a nose ring and a novel who was pointedly ignoring the dried-sticky spill of grape soda in the middle of the floor and who didn't bat an eyelash when Deanna grabbed two pints of cookie dough ice cream and a pair of extra-large mugs from the tray of clean dishes on the counter, also pointedly not being put away.

The girl didn't even bother to take her feet off the counter, just leaning over and tapping on her till until the price came up and shoving Deanna's crumpled wad of dollars into the register without counting them.

It was Deanna's kind of service, and in her price range, even if they were too early to get the bacon-fried shrimp burrito. Or the strawberry pie. She'd have to remember it for some other time.

The guy—Deanna was really going to have to find out his name—watched the whole interaction with a bemused kind of horror, and joined Deanna in pouring the last of the sludge in the self-serve coffee urns into their mugs and nuking it into something that would actually dissolve the seven packets of sugar needed to make it palatable.

They didn't talk, but the guy nudged her elbow politely when he offered her the cream, and went gratifyingly glassy-eyed when she smirked her thanks around a pair of wooden stir sticks.

Deanna didn't usually go for clean-cut guys—that was more Sammy's schtick—because even the young ones tended to be all style and no substance. Literally. Skin, bones, and a just this side of curved abdomen that promised to grow into a proper paunch when they got older. She'd tapped this one because of his panty melting accent rather than his skinny tie and his pretty-boy good looks, but after watching him beat a revenant in the face with the motel telephone she had the thought that she might have to revise her rules of thumb because damn she could pick 'em.

Back in the fuzzy light of the motel room she'd discovered that if you pealed back the layers of tailoring the guy was all whipcord lean lines of densely packed muscle, long clever fingers, and a crooked grin against her navel—and now was really not the time to be thinking about that.

She shook herself awake and let the guy lead her over to the table in the back corner where they had lines of sight on the whole diner, the parking lot, and were close to the side door that led back into the kitchen. It was the spot she'd've picked if she'd been given the option.

Damn.

"So what's your name again?" she asked, peeling the lid off her pint and licking ice cream residue off the plastic without shame.

"Harry," he answered, his mouth quirked and his eyes laughing as she pulled a face.

"Really? Harry?"

"Tell you what," he offered leaning forward, "You can call me whatever you want as long as you promise to remember it in the morning."

Right. No. Less flirtation, more business. She'd already been throttled once tonight.

"Alright then, stringbean, what's your deal then? Are you a hunter?"

"No. Is that what you are?"

"It's as good a job description as any. If you're not a hunter, what are you?"

"Just someone who's come across this kind of thing before," he answered, rubbing at a stain on the lip of his coffee mug, "Experience suggests that if you don't deal with those sorts of things promptly innocents get hurt. I've been told I have a bit of a hero complex."

Deanna hummed her agreement around a mouthful of ice cream, enjoying the glide of it down her sore throat, and propping her booted feet up on the booth beside him.

"Okay, say I buy that," she offered, and she did kind of buy it, there'd been a few scars on his drool worthy frame that looked more like bite marks than anything else, "What I don't buy is that you walk into some random dive dressed like that and walk out with the only girl who not only has an ass made for short-shorts but also a set of rock salt bullets in the back pocket."

"What do rock salt bullets kill?" he asked, curious.

"Not much but they hurt like a sonofabitch and I am more than willing to demonstrate, so how about you start talking?"

The guy— _Harry_ , and what a sucky name for such a pretty piece—huffed, shaking his dark curls out of his eyes, and gave her a piercing stare over the rims of his douchey hipster glasses. She ignored what that look did to her insides because _hello_ , and instead focussed on the humourless curve of his lips.

"Just bad luck love," he offered, "A gorgeous woman asked me what I was drinking and one thing led to another. If there was a plan beyond that it didn't come from me."

Deanna supposed she deserved the arch look, given the way she was throwing accusations around, but it ruffled her feathers because _she'd_ just been looking to get laid and forget about the sixteen year old bitch who'd been using voodoo to string her even bitchier classmates up like those ducks in the windows of Chinese grocery stores. Which was maybe the point.

She ate another spoonful of ice cream and nudged the second pint towards him.

"Eat. Before it melts."

Warily he peeled back the lid and plastic, declining to lick it, the heathen, and he took a small spoonful off the top.

"It's good," he said, he sounded surprised.

Surprised and delighted like he'd expected it to be the next best thing to giant toad vomit and was excited to be proven wrong. God help her, she thought it was cute.

She turned back to her own ice cream, hunting for a nice big chunk of cookie dough.

"So, I never did ask, what was a guy like you doing in a dive like that?"

"Why didn't you ask?" he countered.

Deanna shrugged, "Didn't care. And it seemed obvious. Stand-up guy in a seedy bar. Cliché's are cliché's for a reason."

He nodded, fiddling with his spoon.

"I had a fight with my best friends. We said some things. Hurtful things. Dragged up bad memories. This whole trip has been an exercise in forgetting and they made me remember. I was angry, I wanted to forget, to lose myself again."

"Yeah, alright. I get that. So why me?"

"A pretty girl swaggered up to the bar, wearing confidence like a cloak and I was lucky enough to catch her eye. She made me laugh," he said with a shrug, "It's a combination that isn't as easy to find as you might think."

"Oh gag me, Romeo," she said, sticking her tongue out to defuse the moment and make him laugh again.

"Next time," he offered, toasting her with his ice cream and leaning back in his seat. "For now you could tell me what it was we just set fire to and why it came after you."

Maybe it was the accent but he had a way of asking that made a flat out order seem like a request and Deanna found herself telling him the whole sordid story.

"So the girl had her brother's corpse bound in a death curse," he muttered.

"That's my guess," said Deanna, "Revenants are summoned to enact vengeance. They're not like zombie slaves they're more like the grandfather of the terminator."

"The terminator?"

"Y'know, 'I'll be back.' Will not stop ever until you are dead? That sort of thing."

"Right."

"Anyway, she wasn't powerful enough to bind more than one of those things, and I was planning on blowing town in the morning."

"So soon?"

"Job's done. And me sticking around would raise some…awkward questions with local law enforcement."

"Where will you go?" he asked, scraping at the sides of his carton and not looking at her.

"California," she answered, "My dad was working a job there, our kind of job, last I heard from him anyway. And that was weeks ago now."

"You're worried."

"Nah," she said, grinning determinedly, "My dad's tough. He can handle himself."

"You're worried," he repeated, not accusing, just insistent, punctuating his knowing look with a slow savouring scoop of his ice cream.

Annoying know-it-all bastard.

"Okay fine, I might be a little worried," she said throwing her hands up, "Is that a crime?"

"Of course not."

"It's probably nothing," she insisted, "He's probably just—working. He gets focussed like that sometimes just, eyes forward doesn't see anything but the job. He probably just forgot to call."

Harry didn't say anything, just squeezed her ankle through her boot briefly.

And Deanna didn't need any of that shit.

"Gotta pee," she said sliding out of the booth abruptly and telling herself that the clack of her boot heels on the laminate flooring didn't sound like running away.

The "ladies room" was around the side of the kitchen, down a treacherously narrow set of stairs. The lock was broken and it was predictably both disgusting and out of toilet paper.

Deanna hopped up onto the countertop and pulled out her cell. She'd call dad. He'd pick up this time and she'd drag the sweet piece of ass she'd collected from New Orleans to the nearest roadside motel and they'd have a filthy sex marathon and when they were both ready to kill each other she'd haul ass to the next job dad threw her way and after that nobody could accuse her of running away.

Nobody.

She swore and flicked on her phone. One new message.

She swore again as she checked the number and realized it had a California area code. Probably a payphone. Probably dad. And if he wasn't using any of his other, other burner phones that meant that he was on to something. And it wasn't just whatever was out ganking dudes on the blacktop in Jericho, he only got like this about the thing that'd killed mom.

She stabbed in the passcode for her voicemail and glared ineffectually at the wad of toilet paper on the floor in front of her, swinging her boots as she listened to the message, a ball of ice and barbed wire worry settling itself in her gut.

Whatever had killed mom. It wasn't a pissed off spirit or some hungry creature feature. It was big league. Old and powerful.

And Deanna had a hard time convincing herself that it wasn't more than her dad could handle. She hit seven on her phone and the message played again in all its staticky EVP laden glory.

 _"Deanna...something big is starting to happen...I need to try and figure out what's going on. It may..."_ here dad's voice was almost completely unintelligible, but Deanna could guess what dad was saying, only one thing put that kind of carefully leashed anticipation in his voice these days. _"Be very careful, Dee. We're all in danger."_

We're _all_ in danger. That meant Sammy too.

Deanna sighed and played the message again, trying to think.

It was tempting to just go get Sammy. Dad was missing, the thing that'd killed mom had maybe resurfaced and Deanna didn't want to deal with this on her own. She didn't want to find dad face down in a ditch somewhere.

Or worse she didn't want to be left at loose ends chasing her tail trying to find a man who didn't want to be found.

She swore and kicked over the trash bin, sending more balls of wadded up tissue scattering across the floor and stomped back upstairs.

Harry was still sitting in their booth picking thoughtfully at the last dregs of his ice cream, and looking up when she stomped over. Hands shoved into her pockets.

"Something wrong?"

"I got a call. I'm headed to Jericho. You wanna tag along?"

She had to give credit where credit was due. He did take half a second to consider all the potential meanings of 'tag along' if the slight frown and the way he searched her eyes like he could actually find answers there was any indicator.

Giving up he gave her a shrug and said: "Okay, but just so you know I'm a little rusty at the whole fighting evil…thing."

"Don't worry you can just stand there and look pretty," she offered, "Unless it looks like whatever this thing is about the kill me, then you should hit it with a telephone."

He laughed again. A surprised little snort that he tried and failed to muffle behind the back of one hand.

"Well alright then," he chuckled, standing, "Lead the way."

* * *

 **AN:** So welcome to the start of what promises to be an epic, herein you will find cisswap/sexswap/rule 63ed Winchester sisters, AU from the season one pilot onward. I've spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about Deanna Winchester and this is the result. Please let me know what you think and drop me a review~~


	2. Chapter 2

They'd swung by Harry's hotel room to grab his stuff and so that Deanna could get her prescribed five hours of uninterrupted beauty sleep and analyze the EVP on her laptop, but they were making good time, pulling off the interstate and onto the main road into town in the mid-afternoon.

Harry had been busying himself with her case file, which was less of a file and more a stack of printouts held together by a jumbo sized rubber band.

"Alright," he said, more to himself than to her, "So ten victims. All men. The same road and they all just vanish. No traces to be found. No fingerprints, no blood, no bodies."

Deanna hummed, drumming her fingers to the familiar low beat of the music turned low on the radio.

"And your dad came here because the killings were accelerating, not just one this year, but two in the past six months—"

"Three," Deanna corrected, pulling up alongside the active crime scene.

The county sheriff's department had what looked like all of its deputies out and about, she spotted three on the bridge and two more in waders combing the river. There was another one with a dog on the opposite bank.

They were all milling around like ants who'd had their hill kicked over. Useless and clueless. Still.

She reached over Harry's lap and pulled open the glove compartment, moving papers out of the way and pulling out a cigar box filled with her various fake IDs.

"You wanna come with?" she offered.

He gave her a sceptical look.

"Are they just going to let you wander around their crime scene?"

"Hey, I got a badge, I can do whatever I want," she said, getting out of the car.

Harry scrambled to follow her, shrugging into his suit jacket and looking convincingly rumpled and harried. He'd abandoned the tie in the back seat and had to take a few running steps to fall into step with her long legged stride.

There were days when she really loved her job.

"You guys find anything?" one of the deputies shouted.

"Nothing," called one of the guys in the river.

The two senior deputies were combing through a junker of a car, and looking stumped while doing it, leaning heavily against the open doors and raising their voices to be heard over the rush of the river. Deanna took the opportunity to eavesdrop shamelessly.

"No sign of a struggle," sighed one, "No footprints, no fingerprints. Spotless. It's almost too clean."

"So this kid—Troy—he's dating your daughter, isn't he?"

"Yeah."

"How's Amy doing?"

"She's been putting up fliers downtown, missing posters, more like. She's been at it since the call came in."

"You fellas had another one just like this last month, didn't you?" she interrupted surveying the scene with her hands on her hips even though there was nothing to survey.

As the boy in blue—well, boy in backwater beige—had pointed out the car was clean, the tire tracks showed a skidding swerve and a quick brake but there was no sign that the vehicle had hit anything other than the weak-ass former roadblock.

"And who are you?" asked the younger of the deputies, a tall handsome black man with a suspicious look on his face.

"Federal marshals," Deanna said with a grin that was all teeth and no humour as she brazenly flashed her fake badge.

"You two are a little young for marshals, aren't you?"

He gave her the familiar disbelieving up down eye flick, taking in her battered cowboy boots and the jeans that were loose enough that she could kick him in the throat if she really wanted.

"Thanks, deputy, that's mighty kind of you to say," she drawled, unconcernedly, she knew how to talk the talk, in five minutes he'd have no reason to doubt her professionalism. "You did have another one just like this recently, correct?"

"That's right, about a mile up the road. There have been others before that," he offered, shifting in place, squaring his shoulders. "What's the marshal's interest?"

Sheriff's departments. Sometimes they were a godsend and sometimes it was all jurisdiction and 'where's-your-dick-son?'

"We have a fugitive. Outstanding warrant, with a known associate that lives in the area. These disappearances pinged my radar. You gotta figure, people disappearing, some bad man must be taking them. Boss gave me the go ahead."

The deputy's face didn't ease, but his tense posture did. Deanna held his gaze for a moment and then bent to check the tires on the car. That's right, look at me, totally believable, completely legitimate, I even brought a pencil pusher with me.

Harry took his cue beautifully.

"This is a small town," he offered, "Did you know this latest victim well?"

"Yeah, well, enough. Like you said, town like this everybody knows everybody."

"Is there any other explanation you can offer for his disappearance? Substance abuse problems, anxiety? Enemies?"

"Nothing like that," said the second deputy, "Troy was a lazy bastard but he wasn't a bad kid."

"Apologies," Harry offered in his crisp accent, "We need to consider all the possibilities."

"Any connections between the victims, besides that they're all men?" Deanna butted in, standing from her crouch.

"No. Not as far as we can tell."

"What's the local theory?" she asked, hands on her hips, "If you'd had to lay money down before we walked in here, what would you have said was happening to these men?"

The deputy shrugged, "Honestly, ma'am, I don't know. The department has been throwing words like serial murder, kidnapping ring. But we've never dealt with anything like this before."

"Hm."

Deanna huffed, it was obvious that these good upstanding officers of the law didn't have a clue, not even a local legend to offer up, and the evidence was thin on the ground. There was nothing here for them.

"Alright, then," she said with a tight smile, "Gentlemen, thank you for your time."

She swanned out just as abruptly as she'd swanned in. Arrogance, familiarity. That was the only way to move in circles where you didn't really belong. Lie and lay it on nice and thick, and don't give anyone room to question. It'd been a lot harder to manage before she'd made some headway into her twenties.

"What do you think?" asked Harry, jogging after her.

He really was a great foil. Almost as good as Sammy.

"The police don't know anything so we go talk to the girlfriend. Look for the connection, that's what dad would have done and we're chasing his trail so that's what we do."

"Right," said Harry, following her down the bridge and past the approaching sheriff and the pair of FBI agents approaching the crime scene.

"Can I help you folks?" asked the sheriff with a midwestern drawl even thicker than her own.

"No sir," offered Harry, blinking guilelessly, "We were just leaving."

"Agent Mulder. Agent Scully," muttered Deanna under her breath, sneering at the FBI agents.

"Come on," Harry said, ushering her forward with a warm palm in the small of her back, "What is your pet theory then, love?"

"EVP. Clean crime scene. My money'd be on a spirit, something vengeful and established."

"A ghost?"

Deanna could have laughed at the puzzled look on his face, but she settled for rolling her eyes, "Come on, you don't bat an eyelash at torching a revenant and you don't believe in ghosts?"

"It's not that," he protested as they climbed back into the car, "I just didn't think a ghost could make a person disappear."

"Spirits can do a lot of nasty stuff when they're pissed."

"And how exactly are we meant to stop a ghost?" asked Harry, "We can't touch them. If we can't touch them we can't hurt them. Do we just…trap it?"

"This ain't Ghostbusters, sweetcheeks," Deanna said, pulling away from the crime scene, "If we can find the connections between the victims we can find out what the spirit wants and if we find out what the spirit wants we can usually find out who they were."

"Which helps us how, exactly?"

"We find out who they were, we can find out where the sucker was buried," Deanna explained, "A spirit needs an anchor to stay here, usually it's some kind of remains. Their body. But if you salt and burn the bones they're cut loose from that anchor and they burn away."

"Bloody hell," he said, running a hand through his dark curls. "Alright then, what are we hoping the girlfriend can tell us?"

Deanna shrugged. She wouldn't know what was useful intel until she had a better grasp on this bitch so anything was better than nothing. What she said was a more confident: "I'll know it when I hear it."

They parked the Impala on the main street of what might charitably be called downtown and started walking, following the fliers that plastered windows, telephone poles and walls in equal measure.

Tentatively Harry wrapped an arm around her waist pulling her close against his hip and matching her stride. To an outside observer they could be any other couple out for a stroll in the sunny fall afternoon. What a weird thought.

How long had it been since she'd been one half of a couple?

She spotted a girl, seventeen or eighteen with dyed black hair wearing a brown jacket that was way too big to be her own. She looked worn down, her makeup smudged into the bags under her eyes and she was taping the dregs of what had once been a huge stack of missing posters to the community board in front of the local movie theatre. An idea stuck Deanna and she wound her own arm around Harry's narrow waist and urged him to cross the street to Amy.

Hopefully he would play along.

"You must be Amy," she said, trotting out her best benevolent motherly smile.

Admittedly it wasn't that convincing but the girl was tired and alone and she'd take a free coffee and some sympathy and probably wouldn't question her boyfriend's weird auntie.

"Troy told us about you. I'm his aunt Mary, this is my husband John."

"He never mentioned you to me," Amy said listlessly.

"Yeah, well, that's Troy I guess. We're not around much, we're out in Modesto."

"When we heard what happened," Harry said, "We offered to come down and help look for him. We've been asking around and we were wondering if we might ask you a few questions?"

"There's a place just down the road, we'll buy you a coffee," offered Deanna.

Another girl came up to Amy, her hair was even blacker and her makeup was even thicker, but her smile was all sympathy.

"You okay?" she asked.

"Yeah," offered Amy with a tight, unhappy smile.

"These are Troy's relatives, I was just going to sit down with them at Maggie's."

The friend offered them a once over before squeezing Amy into a protective embrace. "I'll come with you."

The walk was awkward, a silence that was part not wanting to talk and part not knowing what to say fell over their group. Luckily Maggie's, the place Deanna had spotted. Wasn't far and wasn't busy. They got a few coffees courtesy of Berta Aframian and her five thousand dollar limit and then Deanna squeezed in next to Harry on one side of the booth while Amy watched them and didn't touch her coffee.

She started to talk without prompting, and her story had the quality of a story she'd told a hundred times, to police, to her family, to curious neighbours and concerned friends.

"I was on the phone with Troy, trying to get him to come over," she started, "He was driving home. Something distracted him, he said he'd call me right back but he never did. As far as I know I'm the last person he talked to before he—disappeared."

She said it determinedly, like she didn't really believe it. Deanna didn't really believe it either. Kid was dead already in her book. But it was still sad to see the girl already in mourning for a boyfriend she'd clearly loved.

"He didn't say anything strange?" Harry prodded, "Anything out of the ordinary? Like what had distracted him?"

"No," Amy answered, sniffing a bit, "Nothing that I can remember. It was just…just like any other stupid phone call."

"Here's the thing though," said Deanna, leaning forward and shuffling the conversation along before the poor kid burst into tears, "The way Troy disappeared, I mean, it's clear something's not right. Troy was lazy but he was a good kid and good kids don't just vanish without a trace unless something happens. So if you've heard anything—" The two girls shared a look and Deanna paused, "What? What is it?"

"It's just, with all these guys going missing all of a sudden, people talk," said the friend.

"What do they talk about?" asked Deanna.

Talk was promising. Rumours often had a seed of truth to them, especially if enough people were talking about it.

"It's kind of this local legend," said the friend, "Decades ago this one girl got murdered, out on Centennial, story goes that she hitchhikes, and whoever picks her up, well, they disappear forever."

Deanna caught Harry's look out of the corner of her eye. Yeah, that seemed like a good solid lead. A local ghost story, decades old spirit. Particularly the phrase disappear forever.

"Silly, right?" said Amy with a wan smile. "Nobody knows what happened so they're dredging up an old ghost story to explain it."

"I wouldn't have pegged you for a sceptic," said Harry quietly gesturing to the pentagram around her neck.

"This?" she said, with a shadow of a more honest grin as she toyed with the pendant, "It's for pissing off my dad. He doesn't approve of 'that satanic mumbo jumbo'."

The friend rolled her eyes.

"It's funny because the pentagram, couldn't get less satanic if it tried," said Harry offering a charming grin of his own, "It's a symbol of protection. Light magic. Balance. If you believe in that kind of thing."

Amy offered him a speculative smile of her own and Deanna had to roll her eyes. That damn accent. Apparently no red-blooded American woman was immune to it. She kicked him under the table and he dropped a doting and—dare she say it?— _husbandly_ kiss on the top of her hair.

"Come on darling, we should leave these ladies to it," he said.

Suave asshole. She kicked him again just for that before offering a sweet smile to the table.

"It was lovely to meet you Amy, hopefully the next time will be under happier circumstances."

They left Maggie's arm in arm but as soon as they were out of eyeshot Deanna punched him in the arm.

"Ow," he laughed, rubbing at the spot, "What was that for?"

"You know exactly what that was for, _honey_."

He didn't say anything but then again he didn't need to, his eyes were laughing. Asshole.

"Where are we going now?" he asked.

"Library," she snarled, stalking away, "I need to see if I can find anything about a murder on Centennial."

"We spend hours having sex last night and you get this fussed over one kiss?"

"Shut up, and get in the car!" she ordered.

Stupid, perceptive jerk. Why couldn't he be like all the other dumbass self-absorbed morons she picked up in dive bars?

And was she really lamenting a lack of profound stupidity here? She slammed the door and cranked up the Metallica. Harry was still quietly amused. Deanna didn't even know how she knew he was quietly amused but he was and it was pissing her off for reasons that she also didn't care to examine.

The ride to the Jericho Public Library was both too long and too short. She needed a good long drive to clear her head and sharpen her focus as much as she needed the distraction of the case. Her stomach lurched guiltily. Here she was making eyes when dad was missing. Missing like all the other guys in town.

She shook that thought out of her head.

If a spirit wanted to tangle with her dad it could give it the ol' college try but Deanna knew where she'd be putting her money.

The public library was near deserted, as public libraries often were at six thirty on a weeknight, and it was easy to find a free terminal and start looking up back issues of the Jericho Herald, the local paper that had been around almost as long as the town and that had been reporting on the disappearances so far.

"I'm rubbish with computers," Harry offered, folding himself into a chair and settling in to watch her work, "What are you looking for?"

"Murders," Deanna answered, typing a query into the search bar. "The more violent the better."

"Charming. Why?"

"Because spirits are echoes, emotions strong enough to leave a personality footprint. Violent death churns up a lot of negative emotions, fear, anger, hopelessness. Any of that can keep a spirit going for a good long while. Anything less isn't likely to leave a spirit. They need a purpose or they just wither away."

But there were no results, no females murdered on Centennial and all the males hadn't been violently murdered they'd just disappeared. Barely anybody had been murdered in Jericho at all.

"Does it have to be murder? Local legend could've got it wrong. It could be execution or a tragic accident," Harry suggested quietly while she chewed on her lower lip and tapped lightly on the keys, thinking.

"Accident doesn't really fit, not with this many victims," Deanna murmured.

She searched it anyway, skimming through the handful of articles for anything that looked violent enough. But even the few unsolved hit and runs were no good, there was just no connection.

Execution was a bust too, but then if there'd been a gallows out there _that_ would be the root of the local legend, not some hitchhiking chick.

"I missing something," Deanna murmured, scratching at her hair and noting absently that she needed a shower, "I'm missing something obvious. I can feel it."

"What do you want to do?"

Deanna sighed, thinking. Her throat hurt, what she really wanted was a hot bath and a good night's sleep. And maybe the weight of Harry's arm draped over her waist. But…

"Alright, they closed the road off after the vic from April disappeared," she said thinking out loud, "Troy had driven right through the road blocks, fast enough to burn rubber but the car stopped there. Dead in its tracks on the bridge. Three guesses as to why."

"You think we should go back to the bridge?"

Deanna shrugged, confronting the spirit, especially without knowing who it was, was always the last resort but she was out of other leads. The thing could talk, the EVP was proof of that.

"Yeah, alright, let's go. The deputies will've cleared away the crime scene by now. If nothing else we can see if the bitch remembers her name."

"And what if we don't find anything?" asked Harry, following her out.

"Then we check into a motel, shower, sleep. Start in on the families of the previous victims tomorrow, hope that something shakes loose before someone else dies. I should call around and see if anyone matching dad's description is in the local hospital or morgue, too."

"I can do that," said Harry squeezing her shoulder.

"Thanks, but it should be me."

"You don't have to do this whole thing on your own you know. I'm here to help if you want it."

The underlying message was clear, 'I'm with you, you're not alone', Deanna could've hugged him. But she wasn't going to. Instead she offered him a saucy grin, "This from the guy who didn't know how violent spirits were born until two minutes ago, you've got a lot to learn stringbean."

She bumped a gentle fist over his heart to soften the rejection. He didn't seem to take it personally. But he did kiss her head again and she was forced to dump his ass on the pavement so he didn't get any ideas.

He didn't seem all that bothered by it and the drive back out to the bridge passed in companionable, well, not silence because Metallica was blaring from the Impala's speakers the whole way, but there was an easy lack of talking. No awkwardness, no tension. Just companionship. Harry rifled through the case file again, Deanna concentrated on the road.

It felt easy. Easy was nice.

Sylvania Bridge wasn't all that big for all that it was a sturdy construction of thick wood beams that saw regular maintenance. Whatever'd happened here, it wasn't obvious just from looking at the bridge. The river babbled underneath them and the wind was chilly even for November in California, the breeze cutting through the thin fabric of her Henley and raising gooseflesh on her arms.

She leaned against the rail and Harry came up behind her, silently rubbing the warmth back into her arms.

"This was a waste of time," she grumbled, leaning back into him to leech his warmth, "What did I think was going to happen, I'd just say 'here ghostie, ghostie, ghostie,' and we'd all have a freakin' powwow. Urgh. That revenant musta rattled my brains."

"Deanna," Harry murmured urgently against her ear, pointing.

In the middle of the bridge there was a girl, a woman about their age, so pale she almost looked blue but glowing with some sort of inner luminescence. She was pretty with long dark hair, barefoot and dressed in a ragged white dress. She was a spirit if Deanna had ever seen one, corporeal looking enough in the dark if a little out of place and rather than looking vengeful she just looked sad.

She was standing on the rail watching them with baleful eyes.

"Oh fuck me, I could kick myself," she hissed.

It seemed so obvious now with the woman putting out one delicate foot and taking a step right off the bridge. Suicide, after all, tended to be a violent emotionally laden method of death.

They ran after her even though there was nothing they could do, she was already long dead after all. They didn't hear her hit the water. Leaning over the rail Deanna couldn't see her anywhere below. She'd just vanished. No freaking duh.

"Where'd she go?" asked Harry.

"She's still around, we just can't see her," Deanna said. "If this is where she died she won't wander off. Suicide. I can't believe I missed that, this is a freaking bridge!"

Deanna hit the rail of the bridge, hard. She got a sore palm and no satisfaction for her trouble. She switched to glaring rubbing her stinging palm against her jeans.

"Let's go," she growled, "Now that we know what to look for it should be easy enough to find the gravesite."

"Yeah, alright," agreed Harry.

They turned to go back to the Impala only to be blinded by its headlights as the engine rumbled to life.

"What the—"

"Who's driving your car?"

Deanna pulled the keys out of her pocket and jangled them pointedly.

"Bloody brilliant," Harry said.

The Impala's engine revved. The tires squealed and Deanna's baby lurched forward with a rumbling vehicular growl.

"Oh, shit—come on!"

Deanna spun on her boot heel and took off sprinting along the bridge with Harry pounding right after her. There was no way the pair of them could outrun a car, not even at their fastest run-for-your-life-sprint, the Impala, or rather the ghost bitch, caught up to them easily and quickly.

And then there were only two options and one of them was being run over.

Needless to say she vaulted over the bridge rail with a defiant shout that was a little more 'girly scream' than she might have liked, and grunted when she caught one of the support struts with one hand and felt a muscle in her shoulder wrench and strain.

Above her the engine rumbled for another second and then went quiet. Deanna huffed out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. If the ghost bitch had driven her baby off the bridge after them—

She grunted as she swung herself more firmly up onto the bar wincing as the effort made her abused muscles scream painful threats at her. Damn but she needed a vacation. When this was over she was gonna take Harry, get him to pay for a swanky hotel room and spend a week having increasingly filthy sex with him and eating her way through a room service menu with more than three items on it. And taking a bath. With bubbles.

It was then that she realized, Harry wasn't clinging to the bar with her. He'd gone over the edge so he must have—

"Harry?" she called, "Harry!"

"Down here!"

There was a sloshing sound as Harry dragged himself, muddy and sodden and clearly pissed off, but alive. Onto the riverbank.

"You alright?"

"Bloody brilliant," he snarled.

And she laughed at that more out of relief than anything.

"I can't see a bloody thing, and this river smells like a toilet."

"Yeah, well, hunting ain't all glamour and glory," she pointed out, breathlessly, "Gimme a minute I'll come get you."

She fished a couple of pilfered towels from the hotel in Michigan out of the Impala's trunk and jogged down to the riverbank where Harry had stripped out of his suit and was standing sock footed on the rocky bank shivering as he dragged ice-cold water through the clumps of smelly mud clotting up his hair.

"You sure know how to pick 'em," she commented throwing one towel over his shoulders and the other over his head and starting to rub some warmth back into him.

"Have my legs fallen off?" he asked her, teeth chattering, "I can't feel them."

"Still there, and still looking good. The ass too," she offered steering him away from the water and back towards the Impala, bending to retrieve his suit even though it was probably beyond saving.

"Good to see you've got your priorities sorted," he snorted.

"Yeah, well, I'm a classy lady," she said, waggling her eyebrows.

He snorted again, more softly, and squeezed her hand when she handed off his clean-enough-to-see-through glasses.

"Is the car alright to drive?"

"Yeah," Deanna said, folding him into the passenger seat and leaning over him to crank up the heat, "Whatever she did to it it's gone now. But what a bitch."

"You think that was all intentional?"

"'Course," said Deanna putting the car in gear and revving away from the haunted bridge, "Spirits don't like it when you go digging around, and they're not shy about letting you know it. That's why we go after the bones, not the spirit."

"Right, brilliant plan, why didn't we do that?" whined Harry.

"No leads."

"Bloody hell."

"Look on the bright side, now that we have a solid lead we can get some rack, and a shower."

"Merlin, I could use a shower," he moaned.

"I'd say keep your pants on but…" she trailed off with a reflexive leer.

"Not like there's anything to cover down there, I'm fairly sure my bollocks just crawled back up into my body for the rest of forever."

Deanna laughed at his mournful tone. The blue was fading from his lips and the remaining mud was drying out. No permanent harm done, shrunken junk notwithstanding.

They rolled into the nearest motel, and creaky joint run by a creaky old man just outside of the town proper and Deanna left Harry curled up with his damp towels and her heater cranked up to full blast to get them a room for a few days. The creaky old man squinted down at her card and then up at her face thoughtfully.

"You guys having a reunion or something?" he asked.

"What do you mean?" asked Deanna.

"Nothing, nothing, just got another fella, Hector Aframian, staying in 203. Thought you might know him."

"Hector you said? Older guy, dark hair, leather jacket, big black truck and permanently grumpy?"

"That's the one," he said handing over a key to room 214, "Bought out the room for the whole month."

"Huh, well, fancy that, Uncle Hector. You know I didn't think he'd come down?" she said, the lie tripping off her tongue automatically, "My sister's wedding is in a few days, we're doing a nature themed ceremony."

"Hmm, that should be fun," said the old man, no longer paying attention, which was exactly Deanna's intention.

"Oh don't I know it," said Deanna, rolling her eyes for the added drama. "Thanks for this."

"You enjoy your stay miss," he offered by rote, creaking back over to his creaking chair.

Deanna left him to it and strode back out into the parking lot, twirling the room key on its little red key bob around her finger and thinking.

It was tempting to just break into room 203. Pick the lock, see if dad was there. But something in her gut told her he wouldn't be. That, and the lack of big black truck in the parking lot. Dad's ride was the kind of hulking machine that was hard to miss.

And damnit she was tired, she wanted a damn shower and some M&Ms from the vending machine and to sleep the last few hours of this alternately thrilling and crappy ass day away. She was pretty sure her tagalong would agree with her.

Mind made up she took the few long-legged strides required to bring her level with the Impala's trunk and pulled out her overnight bag, and Harry's. Slinging them over the shoulder that hadn't nearly been yanked out of its socket.

When she looked up Harry'd slid out from the passenger seat and was wearing the oversized jean jacket she had thrown into the back seat and forgotten about weeks ago, one of the towels tied around his waist.

Her eyes lingered on the cut of his hipbones for a long moment almost without her permission and she spared a moment to wonder if he'd already wiggled out of the skin tight underwear he'd been wearing in her passenger seat.

The thought made her mouth water, but what came out of that self-same mouth was: "You look fucking ridiculous. Come on, we've got a room and you need a shower."

"Yes, dear," he said grinning.

"Shut up," she said magnanimously leading the way across the motel parking lot and their room.

The room was ugly, carpet that had once been a shade of purple maroon and was now something closer to dried blood and ketchup stain and walls that had been papered sunny yellow and were starting to peel away.

The sheets were cleanish and the room didn't smell like an ash-tray's wet dream though so for now it was home sweet home.

Harry shed the towel and the jacket with speedy alacrity—and yep, he'd done some naked wiggling in the passenger seat of her car—and made a beeline for the shitty little cubby they were generously calling a bathroom.

"Need help finding your nuts?" she called after him when she heard the water start up.

"Only if it's you leading the search parties, darling."

Deanna grinned, skinning out of her Henley, her jeans and her unfortunately sensible underwear, having the presence of mind to fish out her bag of toiletries before she joined him under the dribble of the lukewarm water. Fatigue temporarily set aside for some good clean fun.

Afterwards she stole a pair of his boxers and changed into the Jack Daniels t-shirt that was more holes than fabric to sleep and let him towel dry her hair. She set her big hunting knife, a wickedly serrated monstrosity coated with black Teflon, under her pillow and tucked her favourite gun into the groove between the mattress and the bedframe, and plastered herself all over his bare back and let him haul her leg over his waist.

She dropped off to sleep while wracking her brains trying to remember whether or not he snored.

As a seasoned professional with a streak of paranoia a mile wide it was more than a little disconcerting that Harry could sneak out of the creaky bed and across the creaky floor of their motel room without even rousing her into semi-consciousness.

As a woman who actually hated waking up in the mornings, this stealthiness was a godsend because it meant that Deanna wasn't actually prodded rudely into wakefulness by her instincts until he'd returned to the motel room with an extra-large caramel black-eye and something on an English muffin that might have been intended to pass for egg but was really just yellowy processed goodness.

That, along with a couple of extra strength pain killers for her body's various complaints about their lifestyle made the morning almost not suck for once.

"Marry me," she moaned into the double helping of insulating styrene, sucking down the elixir of the gods.

"Good morning to you too, gorgeous," he answered her, pecking her on the mouth, but wisely avoiding tongue to morning tooth-fuzz contact. "What is on the agenda for today?"

"Marriage," she moaned around a mouthful of nitrite filled goodness.

"City hall will presumably still be there after we deal with the ghost," he pointed out.

"But it might not be, this is California, there are earthquakes, can't leave these things to chance," she mumbled, tearing at the wax paper that was unwisely standing between her and her hashbrowns.

He shook his head at her, smiling quietly again, and tucked into his own breakfast, something that had been processed with vegetables and a tea that smelled strongly of bergamot.

He'd changed too while she'd been out like a light, and she hadn't thought it was possible but she almost found him more delicious in the broken-in jeans and a faded green t-shirt that advertised for some sports team called the Hollyhead Harpies.

After she'd devoured her breakfast sandwiches—Harry'd bought her two, and that crappy stick pie from mickey d's that barely counted but _was_ still technically pie—and reined in the little voice that was screaming, dear God tie him to you now before he gets a better look at you and goes running in the opposite direction, she told him about what she'd learned from the night-clerk.

"So your dad is here?"

" _Was_ here," Deanna corrected with a grimace, folding her legs underneath herself lotus style, "He's long gone now I'll bet. Chasing ghosts of ghosts. Still I wanna check the motel room before we head out. Try and get an idea about where his head was at see if he left something behind we can use to find him."

"Okay," he agreed easily.

His phone rang noisily making his jump and fumble it out of his pocket and hastily decline the call.

Deanna's eyebrows climbed up to her hairline.

"You're not gonna take that?"

He pulled a weary face and shook his head.

"It's Hermione," he said, "I can't—I—she's one of my best friends, and I love her, but she gets a though in her head sometimes and there's just no arguing with her. I just need a few days to cool down from our last fight before we go for round two."

"If you're sure," she said, clearing her throat and tucking her hair behind her ears, "Look, if you wanna call her, I'm gonna get dressed so you'll have some privacy."

"I'm not, but thanks for the offer love," he said, reaching over the snag the last bit of her stick pie and offering her a small but honest smile.

Deanna gave him a fleeting smile in return and gathered up a set of wrinkled clothes from the 'clean' side of her duffel, kicking the bathroom door shut and pulling a face at herself in the mirror as she resisted the urge to press her ear up against the door and instead put her energy into scrubbing at her teeth.

She took a few extra minutes getting beautified for reasons that she didn't care to examine, grimaced at her practical underwear, also for reasons she didn't care to examine, and then set Harry to keeping watch for her while she fiddled with the cheap lock on her dad's motel room door.

"Watch the lines," she murmured, when the tumblers finally clicked over to open and she was able to turn the knob and slip inside.

She stepped over the salt line in the threshold, inhaling deeply and catching the familiar musky whiff of gun oil and leather and greasy diner food that she associated with 'dad' and 'home'.

And if that wasn't enough to confirm that this was dad's place, the multiple 'murder' walls that had been tacked up over the motel's ugly ass walls in an eclectic combination of masking tape, blu-tack and thumb tacks would have been a pretty big clue.

"He hasn't been here for a couple of days at least," Deanna sighed, nose curling up as she caught a whiff of the rancid half-eaten burger on the nightstand, "I'm starting to thinking he called me on his way outta town, brought me here to finish the job he couldn't be bothered with."

"These are the victims," Harry muttered frowning at the far wall, "One through ten all lined up, their jobs, family, addresses, this is—"

"Kinda creepy, right?" she snorted, "I can't believe he just left this here for some maid to find at the end of the month, a stalker's profile on a bunch of murder vics and then a wall full of death lore. It's reckless even for dad. And look at these rings, salt, cat's-eye shells. He wanted to keep something out pretty damn bad."

"You don't think it was the ghost?"

"No," said Deanna, "No I do not."

Harry watched her for a moment, she could feel his gaze on the back of her neck and the air filled with unasked questions as she made a half-hearted check of the bathroom cubicle.

Dad had forgotten his half-empty tube of toothpaste in the shower, but otherwise it was clean.

"Deanna," called Harry, "I think your dad might have figured this out."

She quickly slipped back out into the main room to see Harry skimming over one of the printouts from Satan's party wall.

"This is the ghost from the bridge, Constance Welch. According to this she found her two small kids drowned in the bathtub and called emergency services but the children were already dead and she couldn't handle it, in spring of 1981 she jumped off the Sylvania bridge and drowned in the river. They didn't find her for a couple of days, not until she washed ashore."

"Does it say where she's buried?" asked Deanna going up on tip toes to read over his shoulder.

"No, not that I can see."

"Alright, so we talk to the husband, Joseph Welch. Hopefully he's still alive."

"Ah, there's something else, you dad had this tacked up there—under 'woman in white'," Harry said pointing to an eight and a half by eleven gap in the re-papering job dad had set up.

Deanna sucked in a breath and almost laughed, turning back to survey the vic list, hands on her hips, "Well, there's our connection. Cheating assholes. I should've guessed since they're all men."

"On behalf of my gender, 'hey'," said Harry pulling a wry face.

"Hey I didn't make the rules, but you get a woman in white one way, husband cheats, wife kills her children in a fit of temporary insanity, can't live with it so she offs herself and then once she's learned how to do her ghost thing she starts taking unfaithful men."

"That, is patently awful," he said mildly, dropping the article on the bedspread.

"Yeah, well, welcome to the party line," said Deanna with a sarcastic little shimmy, "We're all tequila shots, dead babies, and twisted vengeance up here."

He towed her in by her belt loops and just rested his chin on her head while she scowled down at his collarbones.

"I could be wrong," he said quietly, "But it seems to me like this particular party line is more about you dealing with these things yourself so that other people don't have to."

She laughed a bit, but there was no humour in it, "Nah, we're in it for the twisted vengeance. The heroism is just a side benefit."

He kissed her on the head again, and she jabbed him in the ribs.

"Alright, come on, enough with the chick flick moment, let's—"

There was a sudden pounding on the door. And the pair of them jerked into wary alertness.

"This is the Jericho County Sheriff's Department, open up!"

"God fuckin' damnit," muttered Deanna, "Old man musta ran the card number."

"There's a window in the bathroom," said Harry quietly, "They won't be able to hold me, but you should get out of here. Deal with the ghost."

"Hell, no. They'll try and pin this whole bitch on you, it's not gonna be that easy," Deanna said, "We should both get out of here while—"

"Just go, Deanna," he insisted, and Deanna couldn't help but notice in that moment that his eyes were very, very green. "This isn't my first flirtation with lawbreaking, I'll be fine. Go."

"Mr. Aframian, we have a warrant! Open up or we're coming in!"

Deanna swore.

"Fine. Fine." She reached up and dragged him down for a long thorough kiss, "Don't get any heroic ideas. I'll figure something out alright."

Harry reached down and shoved the article about Constance Welch into her hands.

"Go."

A puddle of guilt settled low in her gut but Deanna was firm about ignoring it as she eased the window open just enough to squeeze herself through.

"Where's your partner?" she heard the deputy from the bridge ask.

"On a coffee run," Harry said neutrally, "Can I help you officers?"

"Oh, I don't doubt it son," said the deputy, "Fake US Marshal, that's pretty illegal even before the fake credit card. Is there anything about you that's real?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," said Harry, "I can assure you I—"

Whatever assurances Harry offered the pissed off deputy Deanna didn't hear them too busy hanging from the second story window by her fingertips and then dropping the ten feet into a crouch on the cracked asphalt behind the motel and cutting through the small wooded area behind it and then slowing to a stroll as she reached the next street over.

She pulled the crumpled article from her pocket and started up the road. Finding Joseph Welch wouldn't be too hard, she'd finish the job. Bust Harry outta slam and they'd get the hell outta town. Maybe even the hell out of California.

She sternly quashed the more-than-a-twinge of guilt that pounded in her chest every time she reminded herself that this was happening to Harry, who by any measure was a freaking awesome guy who didn't deserve this, because he'd thrown in with her and her shit.

And she really couldn't think about that. The job. Focus on the job.

It was easy enough to find Joseph Welch. He was alive and listed in the phone book. Living just outside of town proper. She circled around to get the Impala, 'cause no way was she waiting for her baby to be towed away, and then headed out there to see the cheating scum that had started this whole damn gong show.

* * *

 **AN:** Next segment I was thinking of trying for Harry's POV so this seemed like a good place to end the chapter, hope you all enjoyed.

I've received an incredibly response from you guys over the past few days, beyond what I had ever expected and I'm really excited to see that you guys like my concept since I know it's a little of the beaten track. Also I forgot to mention but many thanks go out to Byakugan789 for their ideas and encouragement~~

Please feel more than welcome to review with comments, questions and criticisms, I love hearing from you guys and feedback of course can only help make me a better writer :)

til next time.


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